gizmola

Alas, Inserts on a Table locking transaction system with no contention isn\'t a very good test, although I commend your approach. Definately read this if you haven\'t. http://www.mysql.com/doc/en/Table_locking.html

You need a connection, name, password and database to use mysql. There\'s nothing more to it than that.

WHen you start a string with a single tic it\'s interpreted to be a string literal by php. Use a double quote around the assignment instead, and php will do the variable replacement you expect. [php:1:501ca3e94d]<?php $sql = \"INSERT INTO `stocks` (`Title`, `ID`, `Value`) VALUES (\'$title\', \'$id\', \'$value\');\"; $query = mysql_query($sql); if ($query) { echo \"Success!\"; } else { echo \"ERROR!\"; } ?>[/php:1:501ca3e94d]

Speaking of headaches, I have a huge one at the moment, and I must confess I\'m not up to the task of scrutinizing your code, but I do have a kneejerk reaction to this design. IMNSHO, I feel you should have a table called msgread. When a reader reads a message, insert a row into this table, as oppossed to your current design. The first and most obvious reason for this is: 1. WHen you start you have let\'s say 10 users. There\'s let\'s assume 500 messages in the forum. Now user 11 signs up. Are you going to have the system go out and add Didnotread rows for all 500 messages? Ouch. Based on the way forums are used, I think it\'s a much better design, not to mention, one that spreads the transaction load, to simply add a row to a readmsg table when someone pulls up a message.

If you mean lookup values, I\'m prejudiced towards keeping that type of stuff in the database. This is what is generally referred to as having a \"data driven\" design. In general small tables like these should be cached by the database, and retrieval is as close to instantaneous as the database can be. There are many different things that can become a bottleneck in an application, and I\'ve found it\'s best to create the system first, then tune around the bottlenecks, rather than to assume you know what the bottlenecks will be and start making design decisions based around those assumptions.

You just need to execute a simple query like this: UPDATE phpbb_users SET user_points = 5 where user_posts >= 5 I\'ll leave it to you, to figure out how to get php to execute that for you

It could be a number of different problems. Check the mysql.err file to see if there\'s more info there.